Worlding Raga: 4 – Who Worlds?

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Worlding Raga: 4 – Who Worlds?
Domestic Cozy
April 2, 2019 By Ian Cheng
Elderblog Sutra

So far we’ve been discussing Worlding as an art. One that an individual creator can Infinite Machine
engage in on their own. As Venkat suggested, we are already living in an emerging
Mediocratopia
Worlding culture replete with examples, from superhero franchises, to blogamatic
Predictable Identities
universes, to people as channels of their own lives. It made me think it’s worth
zooming out for a post to consider: what possesses a person to want to make a Refactorings Roundups
World? What reward does Worlding offer over all the other drives competing in an The Goat-Crow-Rat Triangle
artist’s mind? Who Worlds in there?
Weirding Diary

Worlding Raga

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In the midst of the creative process, the artist experiences a jumble of voices and
competing directives. To an untrained ear, this seems like the undifferentiated
Crash Early, Crash Often
expression of an inner monologue that can’t make up its mind. But if you listen
carefully, you can begin to hear distinct voices fighting to be heard. It took me a
long time to realize that an artist is not one unified person, but something like a
crew of sub-personalities or mental demons. Each with their own motivations,
sense of opportunity and threat, and unique filter for relevancy. What if we could
learn to identify each of these demons? What if we could become more aware of
who is speaking, understand what each cares about, and begin to strategize how
and when to use them?

Consider this 2×2 of artist’s demons.

Be Slightly Evil

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Gervais Principle

The horizontal axis describes the kind of artistic destination that a demon seeks. A Tempo
demon Seeking Home is a desire towards art that advances the perfection and
durability of known culture by addressing its dysfunctions. It is a desire to work
within existing games that have proven to sustain human life, and to refine them in
order to make them more enduring. In contrast, a demon Seeking Surprise is a
desire towards art that touches a frontier and captures some of its spark. It is a
desire that looks to the never ending chaos of Reality for new info and
transformative potential.

If Seeking Home becomes too tedious or fixed, the artist may turn to a demon who
Seeks Surprise to make things interesting again. And if Seeking Surprise become
too disorienting or fluid, the artist may turn to a demon who Seeks Home to
reaffirm a fixed cosmology of meaning to work on.

Every Cradle is a Grave

The vertical axis describes the navigational style for how a demon steers towards
its artistic destination. A demon who Steers By Gut is navigating by immediate
instincts to get immediate results. When the creative seas are choppy, this demon
reacts with evolutionarily honed impulses. Feelings are the most trusted compass:
there is no broader perspective that can match the reflex and embodied intuition of
gut feelings. In contrast, a demon who Steers By Story is navigating with the
perspective that the current situation sits within a larger chain of events. Today
you’re enduring a stormy day, but you know that the bird sighting means you’re
close to landfall.

If the Story cannot expand to accommodate the unexpected, the artist turns to the
Gut for immediate survival. And if the Gut proves wrong too many times, the
artist looks to Stories to put it all into perspective.

Four archetypes of artist’s demons come out of this:

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The Director (D) – seeking home, steering by story. The conscientious reformer
demon who believes that there are important problems whose complexities
deserve to be explored in depth, typically via narrative, for they contain within
them meaningful and praise worthy solutions. The investigator, the professor,
the revisionist, the mythologist, the architect, the culture guard. If in charge,
makes “Good” Art.
The Cartoonist (C) – seeking home, steering by gut. The spontaneous reformer
demon who believes we are united by what we feel, and that our emotions are
ripe to be manipulated in order to alleviate immediate pain and confusion.
Achieved through limbically resonant movements and sounds, making
characters and symbols, naming. The joker/comedian, the voice of the tribe,
the pornographer, the ad man, the meme maker, the persuader. If in charge,
makes Flag Art.
The Hacker (H) – seeking surprise, steering by gut. The spontaneous disruptor
demon who tinkers, breaks and modifies systems, discovers first principles,
and unlocks new leverages along the way. The wizard, the pharmacist, the
magician, the trickster. If in charge, makes “New” Art.
The Emissary (E) – seeking surprise, steering by story. The conscientious
disruptor demon who sees every effort as a step in the continual growth and
iterated maintenance of a never-ending story. Sees in terms of living iterations
and time scales beyond a human lifespan, protects and aligns core values
across efforts, grooms others to be a part of the living story, and accepts its own
change as the inevitable adaptation to changes in the wider world. The
gardener, shaman, mother, CEO, streamer. If in charge, makes Portal Art.

All four demons can possess an artist in varying combinations with varying
competency throughout the process of developing an artwork. In the end, the
demonic priorities of an artist reveal themselves to an audience. The message is the
demon: what gets expressed most clearly is the dominant demon at play in the
artwork’s making. You can play a fun game with an artwork guessing which
demon dominantly possessed the artist, sometimes even by title alone. Shawshank
Redemption. Jackass: the Movie. Enter The Void. Star Wars: Episode IV: A New
Hope.

The number and combination of demons that an artist competently exercises

determines the scope of a project. Here’s a cooking analogy:

one demon creation: prepping an interesting ingredient or sauce. A discrete

creative task; fodder for greater uses.
two demon creation: cooking an artisanal dish. A single work that achieves a
sufficient compression of artistic priorities, and is regarded as stimulating to
someone somewhere.
three demon creation: designing a full sequence course. A complete project,
worthy of appreciation for its weaving of multiple drives and its stimulation of
multiple dimensions of the viewer’s neurology.
four demon creation: conceiving and running a restaurant, with its own
distinct vibe, business model, culture, secrets, dysfunctions. A dedicated home
to further produce and support one, two, and three mask creations. An
ongoing iteratively satisfying project. The fullest expression of a World.

A creation is generally more interesting the more demons it involves. More demons

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do not result in a more complicated or confusing experience for an audience. On

the contrary, if all demons are working together, the viewer feels more and more
immersed in something like a World. They feel portaled into a rich and immersive
experience, one that is worth repeatedly visiting or even living in.

Moreover, for the artist/creator, a four demon creation makes a powerful

motivational guarantee: it promises an increasingly sustainable World for hosting
further creations, amplifying the interconnections with each other, and
compounding a sense of meaningfulness.

I was struck by Venkat’s observation about Terry Pratchett writing Discworld as

both a “parody of Worlding tropes and reliant on them to power the World
coherently.” It seems that juggling the maximal combination of demons seems to be
where Pratchett’s artistic brain liked to dwell, with particular tension between his
Emissary and his Cartoonist.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown. Let’s first assume the artist is not acquainted
with the Emissary yet. These are the options available to the artist (try your own
examples):

One demon creations

C only = a joke
H only = a trick
D only = a moral
E only = ?

Two demon creations

C + H = a magic act
C + D = a story
D + H = a playbook
C+E=?
D+E=?
H+E=?

Three demon creations

C + D + H = a Gesamtkunstwerk
C+D+E=?
C+H+E=?
D+H+E=?

Four demon creations

C+D+H+E=?

For an artist, the Director and Cartoonist should be familiar demons. The artist is
accustomed to the Director setting up some parameters of a project and its overall
aim, and the Cartoonist working bit by bit to make it emotionally resonant. The
Hacker might also be familiar: the artist discovers a new trick, a new mental model,
or a new tool and get excited about using it to incrementally expand the range of
what the Director and Cartoonist are capable of expressing.

But what about the Emissary? The Emissary is almost never consciously called

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upon for its artistic capacity. It’s as if the Emissary is the demon that we reserve
(and exhaust) for the iterated game of living life itself – dating, maintaining
friendships, evolving a career, keeping up the home, raising pets and kids,
maintaining social media accounts. But what if the emissary could be integrated
into the artistic process? What if its concerns for iterative growth and
transformation were an artistic consideration? What options would open up?

One demon creations

C only = a joke
H only = a trick
D only = a moral
E only = a rule

Two mask creations

C + H = a magic act
C + D = a story
D + H = a playbook
C + E = a meme
D + E = a wiki
H + E = a tool

Three mask creations

C + D + H = a Gesamtkunstwerk
C + D + E = a series, a channel
C + H + E = an app
D + H + E = a practice or ritual

Four mask creations

C + D + H + E = a World

A last word about art. Art is not an object, but a special kind of communication
between an artist and an audience. It’s a communication for when a phone call
won’t do. For when you want to communicate something more nutritious,
contradictory, complex, or strange. For when you want that communication to
actually hit a person’s neurology and get metabolized into their mind. But since
high bandwidth telepathy doesn’t exist yet, a mediating object needs to be crafted
to carry this communication: the artwork.

But what if this communication could signal it is not yet complete, but part of an
ongoing transmission wave? What if this communication could promise there is a
lot more you haven’t heard yet? What if its artwork wasn’t just a singular thing
someone made, but evidence of a living World being articulated? It would be
Worlding as an art.

Perhaps then a near-future Worlding culture would be one that more consciously
and actively aspires to its own promise. One where art and life truly merge, and
where making a life (and living) out of living Worlds could be a believable path for
anyone.

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About Ian Cheng

Ian Cheng is an artist based in New York. Follow his work on Instagram and
at iancheng.com

Comments

Cyaran says
April 2, 2019 at 12:35 pm

“Core value maintenance” belongs under director. Probably add multiple

and/or non-compulsory narratives to the Emissary definition. If you want to keep
“gardener”, maybe add “landscaper” to Director for the legibility nod.

My overall favorite comp is:

10% cartoonist (compression and simplification without caricature; maintain some

referentiality; if emotionality is also part of cartoonist, mayyybe 15%)
30% hacker (any more and I feel you should do the hacking first and then present your
results)
40% emissary
20% director

For something more “audience focused” you need more points in Cartoonist, but I would
only go above 20 points for intentional propaganda. I wouldn’t go under 20 points in
Hacker either.

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